Friday, February 27, 2015

Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson

Today's blog entry is from Noah, a high school senior. I wish I could say I wrote this book review, but I must give credit where credit is due. I did read the book and enjoy it more than I thought I would, and this captures why smart high school guys love Steelheart

Rarely do stories engender in me as many conflicting emotions as Brandon Sanderson’s sci-fi/fantasy novel Steelheart, the first of the Reckoners series. Tapped by Drew E. as the Galloway Book Club’s choice for the month of February, I approached the 400 page novel expecting a campy, melodramatic plotline with the approximate literary value of Go Dog Go, bound tenuously together by intermittently hard-to-follow action sequences and a poorly constructed romantic subplot. I found exactly what I expected.

And I couldn’t put it down.

Steelheart is a fantastical dystopian novel, set ten years after the appearance of a glowing red star in the heavens, known as Calamity. Roughly a year after Calamity’s appearance, certain humans began manifesting various powers—such as flight, the ability to create forcefields, super agility, impervious skin, and other equally ridiculous capabilities—and, for one reason or another, those individuals became implacably evil with no regard for human life. Such people are known as Epics.

I’m sure that description prompted many of you to role your eyes back into your head; the plot does, I wholeheartedly agree, sound patently ridiculous. But it is a siren, my friends, luring any readers within its range to dash their brain upon the rocks of literary mind candy. Seriously, after the first chapter I began counting down the time until I could read again. My sleep suffered. Had the novel been longer, a significant decline in my academic performance wouldn’t have been surprising. Throughout the course of reading the book, I suppressed the part of my brain that steadfastly reminded me how, objectively, I should find the novel silly rather than engrossing.

Sanderson’s protagonist, David, whose biblical name is possibly the only allusion in the entire book, was an eight year old when the High Epic Steelheart, now emperor of Newcago (used to be Chicago), killed his father. Now, David is an 18 year old with a deep-seated hatred for Epics and an even more intense desire for revenge. He has dedicated his adolescence to studying epics and a mysterious group, the Reckoners, who wage war on them. With incredible predictability, when a Reckoners cell appears in Newcago, David manages to join them and lobby for an attack on Steelheart.


I just read the above paragraph, and once again, I’m amazed at how much I enjoyed the book. I don’t know how it happened. What came over me? Surely IQ points dripped out of my ears whenever I cracked the novel—but, after some soul-searching, I regret nothing. Sanderson knows how to weave a tacky plotline into a web of suspense, wind up his readers, and force them, against their better judgement, to revel in a narrative brimming with superpowers, vendettas, and dramatic confrontations. To read Steelheart is stare down the darker demons of our literary tastes, which we all need to do once in a while.

Friday, February 13, 2015

March: Book Two by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell

The story of John Lewis's activism continues in this graphic novel. Book One covered his childhood and the sit-ins. This book continues with the Freedom Rides and ends with the March on Washington. This is also the time period when John is made head of SNCC and is walking the line of representing the will of the young people versus getting along with other civil rights leaders. Most interesting to me were the arguments about the content of Lewis' speech at the March on Washington and the last-minute changes that were made. As in the first book, the story is compelling and the artwork complements it perfectly. This is a book that everyone should know about.

Thursday, February 12, 2015

Are You Experienced by Jordan Sonnenblick

Everyone has heard about Woodstock, the most famous concert of the 1960s. Can you imagine being transported back in time and experiencing it for yourself? That's what happens to 15-year-old Rich. And the craziest part of all is that he is attending the concert with his then 15-year-old Dad and his then 17-year-old uncle whom he knows is going to soon die an early death. I love Jordan Sonnenblick and this book is not only a great story with his typical mix of humor and sentiment, but I also learned a lot about the experience of being at Woodstock. Of course, you couldn't describe Woodstock without including some rather mature content, so this book is recommended for 8th grade on up. If you lost music, you will especially love this book with it's appearances by Jimi Hendrix and other legendary musicians.